Tag Archives: Lancashire

My negativity on the operating prospects for the reinsurance and specialty insurance sector has been articulated many times previously in this blog. Many of the same factors are impacting the broader commercial insurance market. Pricing conditions in the US and globally can be seen in the graph below.

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Two insurers, at different ends of the size scale, which I have previously posted on, are AIG (more recently here and here) and Lancashire (more recently here and here). Given that a lot has happened to each since I last posted on them, I thought a quick update on both would give an interesting insight into the current market.

First up is AIG who have been under a lot of pressure from shareholders to unlock value, including a break-up plan for the insurance giant from the opportunistic rascal Carl Icahn. The graph below shows a breakdown of recent operating results (as ever with AIG longer term comparisons are hampered by their ever changing reporting segments). The improvement in the UGC mortgage insurance business has been dwarfed by the poor non-life results which were impacted by a significant reserve strengthening charge.

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In January, Peter Hancock (the 5th CEO since Hank Greenberg left in 2005) announced a new strategic plan to the end of 2017, the main points of which are

Return at least $25 billion of capital to shareholders through dividends and share buy-backs from operating profits, divestitures and other actions such as monetizing future life profits by $4-5 billion through reinsurance purchases.

Enhance transparency by separating into an operating portfolio with a goal of over 10% return on equity and a legacy portfolio that will focus on return of capital. Reorganize into at least nine modular, more self-contained business units to enhance accountability, transparency, and strategic flexibility.

Reduce general operating expenses by $1.6 billion, 14 percent of the 2015 expenses.

Improve the commercial P&C accident year loss ratio by six points.

Pursue an active divestiture program, including initially the 20% IPO of UGC.

The non-life reserve charge in 2015 amounted to $3.6 billion. 60% of the charge came from the (mainly US) casualty business, 16% from financial lines (again mainly in the US) and 15% from the run-off business. After the last material reserve strengthening in 2010, the worrying aspect of the 2015 charge is that approximately two thirds comes from accident years not yet 10 years old (which is relatively immature for long tail casualty business particularly when 42% of the charge is on excess casualty business). The impact of the reserve hikes on the commercial P&C segment can be clearly seen in the graph below.

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Perhaps the most aggressive target, given current market conditions, in the strategic plan is the 6% improvement in the commercial P&C accident year loss ratio by the end of 2017. The plan includes exiting approximately $1 billion of US casualty business, including poorly performing excess casualty business, primary and excess auto liability, health-care and financial lines business. Growth of $0.5 billion is been targeted in multi-national, financial lines, property upper middle market and major accounts which involve specialist engineering capabilities, international casualty and emerging risks such as cyber and M&A insurance. AIG also recently announced a two year reinsurance deal with Swiss Re on their US casualty book (it looks like a 25% quota share). The scale of the task for AIG in meeting this target can be seen in the exhibit below which takes a number of slides from the strategy presentation.

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I was struck by a quote from the firm on their turnaround plan – “We will use the data and analytical tools we have invested in to significantly differentiate and determine where we should focus our resources.” I suspect that every significant insurer would claim to have, or at least aspire to have, similar analytical capabilities. Big data and analytical driven underwriting is undoubtedly the future for large insurers with access to large amounts of quality data. Fortune had an interesting recent article on the analytical firm Palantir who are working with some insurers on sharpening their underwriting criteria for the social media age. An analyst in Citi even suggested that Goggle should look at buying AIG as a fintech play. The entry of the big internet firms into the insurance sector seems inevitable in some form or other, although I doubt AIG will be part of any such strategy.

As to the benefits of staying a large composite insurer, AIG cited an analysis commissioned by consultants Oliver Wyman supporting the benefits of diversification between the life and non-life business of AIG. Using the S&P consolidated model as a proxy, Oliver Wyman estimate a $7.5 billion capital benefit to AIG compared to separate life and non-life businesses, as envisaged in Icahn’s plan.

So, can AIG achieve the aggressive operational targets they have set themselves for the P&C business? Current market conditions present a considerable challenge. Combined with their recent results, an end of 2017 target for a 6% improvement is extremely aggressive. Too aggressive for my liking. However, the P&C results should improve somewhat over the short term (particularly if there is no more big reserve charges) and actions such as expense reductions, monetizing future life profits and divestitures will give AIG the fire power to hand out sweeties to shareholders. For those willing to take the punt, the return of a chunk of the $25 billion target in dividends and share buy-backs over the next 2 years for a firm with a current market value of $61 billion, trading at a 0.72 multiple to book value (trading around 0.92 of book less AOCI and DTA), may be too tempting to resist. It does have a certain allure…..

Lancashire, a London market specialty insurer and reinsurer with a mantra of disciplined underwriting, is at the opposite end of the scale spectrum with a niche focus. Long cherished by investors for its shareholder friendly dividend policies, Lancashire has been under pressure of late due to the heavy competition in its niche markets. The energy insurance sector, for example, has been described by the broker Willis as dismal with capacity chasing a smaller premium pool due to the turmoil in the oil market. A number of recent articles (such as here and here) highlight the dangers. Alex Maloney, the firm’s CEO, described the current market as “one of the most difficult trading environments during the last twenty years”. In addition, Lancashire lost its founder, Richard Brindle, in 2014 plus the CEO, the CFO and some senior underwriters of its Lloyds’ Cathedral unit in 2015.

The underwriting discipline that Lancashire professes can be seen in the recent accident year loss ratios and in the 30% drop in gross written premiums (GWP), as per the graph below. The drop is more marked in net written premiums at 35% due to the increase in reinsurance spend to 25% of GWP (from approx 10% in its early years).

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The timely and astute increase in reinsurance protection spend can be seen in the decrease in their peak US aggregate exposures. The latest probable maximum loss (PML) estimates for their US peak exposures are approximately $200 million compared to historical levels of $300-350 million. Given the lower net premium base, the PML figures in loss ratio terms have only dropped to 40% from 50-60% historically. Lancashire summed up their reinsurance purchasing strategy as follows:

“Our outwards reinsurance programme provides a breadth and depth of cover which has helped us to strengthen our position and manage volatility. This helps us to continue to underwrite our core portfolio through the challenges posed by the cycle.”

As with AIG, the temptation for shareholders is that Lancashire will continue with their generous dividends, as the exhibit below from their Q4 2015 presentation shows.

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The other attraction of Lancashire is that it may become a take-over target. It currently trades at 1.4 times tangible book level which is rich compared to its US and Bermudian competitors but low compared to its peers in Lloyds’ which trade between 1.58 and 2.0 times tangible book. Lancashire itself included the exhibit below on tangible book values in its Q4 2015 presentation.

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It is noteworthy that there has been little activity on the insurance M&A front since the eye boggling multiples achieved by Amlin and HCC from their diversification hungry Japanese purchasers. Many in the market thought the valuations signaled the top of the M&A frenzy.

Relatively, AIG looks more attractive than Lancashire in terms of the potential for shareholder returns. However, fundamentally I cannot get away from current market conditions. Risk premia is just too low in this sector and no amount of tempting upside through dividends, buy-backs or M&A multiples can get me comfortable with the downside potential that comes with this market. As per the sentiment expressed in previous posts, I am happy with zero investment exposure to the insurance sector right now. I will watch this one play out from the sidelines.

There is little doubt that the financial services industry is currently facing many challenges and undergoing a generational change. The US economist Thomas Philippon opined that the finance industry over-expansion in the US means that it’s share of GDP is about 2 percentage points higher than it needs to be although he has also estimated that the unit cost of intermediation hasn’t changed significantly in recent years, despite advances in technology and the regulatory assaults upon the industry following the financial crisis.

The insurance sector has its own share of issues. Ongoing low interest rates and inflation, broader low risk premia across the capital markets, rapid technology changes such as big data and the onset of real time underwriting are just the obvious items. The Economist had an article in March that highlighted the prospective impact of data monitoring and technology on the underwriting of motor and health risks. This is another interesting post on a number of the new peer to peer business models such as Friendsurance, Bought by Many, and Guevara who are trying to disrupt the insurance sector. There can be little doubt that the insurance industry, just like other financial sectors, will be impacted by such secular trends.

However, this post is primarily focused on the short to medium term outlook for the specialty insurance and reinsurance sector. I have been asked a few of times by readers to outline what I think the next few years may look like for this sector. My views of the current market were nicely articulated by Alex Maloney, the Group CEO of Lancashire, who commented in their recent quarterly results statement as follows:

“The year to date has seen a flurry of activity on the M&A front within the industry, much of this, in my view, is driven by the need to rationalise and refocus oversized and over stretched businesses. We also continue to see a bout of initiatives and innovations in the market, the sustainability and longer term viability of which are questionable. These are symptoms of where we are in the cycle. We have seen these types of trends before and in all likelihood, will see them again.”

Lloyds of London has had a colourful past and many of its historical issues are specific to it and reflective of its own eccentric ways. However, as a proxy for the global specialty sector, particularly over the past 20 years, it provides some interesting context on the trends we find ourselves in today. Using data from Lloyds with some added flavour from my experiences, the graphic below shows the dramatic history of the market since 1950.

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The impact of Hurricane Betsy in 1965 upon Lloyds illustrated a number of the fault-lines in the structure of Lloyds with the subsequent Cromer report warning on the future danger of unequal treatment between insiders (aka working Names) and “dumb” capital providers (aka all other Names). The rapid influx of such ill informed capital in the late 1970s and the 1980s laid the seeds of the market’s near destruction largely due to the tsunami of US liability claims resulting from asbestos and pollution exposures in the 1980s. These losses were exacerbated by the way Lloyds closed underwriting years to future capital providers through vastly underpriced reinsurance to close transactions and the practice of the incestuous placement of excess of loss retrocession for catastrophe losses within the market, otherwise known as the London Market Excess of Loss (LMX) spiral. There is a clever article by Joy Schwartzman from 2008 on the similarity between the LMX spiral and the financial risk transformational illusions that featured heavily in the financial crisis. Indeed, the losses from the sloppy “occurrence” liability insurance policy wordings and the tragedy of unheeded asbestos risks continued to escalate well into the 1990s, as the exhibit below from a 2013 Towers Watson update illustrates.

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What happened in Lloyds after the market settlement with Names and the creation of the “bad bank” Equitas for the 1992 and prior losses is where the lessons of Lloyds are most applicable to the market today. The graphic below shows the geographical and business split of Lloyds over the past 20 years, showing that although the underlying risk and geographical mix has changed it remains a diversified global business.

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Released from the burden of the past after the creation of Equitas, the market quickly went on what can only be described as an orgy of indiscipline. The pricing competition was brutal in the last half of the 1990s with terms and conditions dramatically widened. Rating indices published by the market, as below, at the time show the extent of the rate decreases although the now abandoned underwriting indices published at the same time spectacularly failed to show the impact of the loosening of T&Cs.

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As Lloyds moved from their historical three year accounting basis in the 2000s it’s difficult to compare historical ratios from the 1990s. Notwithstanding this, I did made an attempt to reconcile combined ratios from the 1990s in the exhibit below which clearly illustrates the impact market conditions had on underwriting results.

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The Franchise Board established in 2003, under the leadership of the forthright and highly effective Rolf Tolle, was created to enforce market discipline in Lloyds after the disastrous 1990s. The combined ratios from recent years illustrate the impact it has had on results although the hard market after 9/11 provided much of the impetus. The real test of the Franchise Board will be outcome of the current soft market. The rating indices published by Amlin, as below, show where rates are currently compared to the rates in 2002 (which were pushed up to a level following 2001 to recover most of the 1990s fall-off). Rating indices published by Lancashire also confirm rate decreases of 20%+ since 2012 in lines like US property catastrophe, energy and aviation.

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The macro-economic environment and benign claims inflation over the past several years has clearly helped loss ratios. A breakdown of the recent reserve releases, as below, show that reinsurance and property remain important sources of releases (the reinsurance releases are also heavily dependent on property lines).

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Better discipline and risk management have clearly played their part in the 10 year average ROE of 15% (covering 2005 to 2014 with the 2005 and 2011 catastrophe years included). The increasing overhead expenses are an issue for Lloyds, recently causing Ed Noonan of Validus to comment:

“We think that Lloyd’s remains an outstanding market for specialty business and their thrust towards international diversification is spot on from a strategic perspective. However, the costs associated with Lloyd’s and the excessive regulation in the UK are becoming significant issues, as is the amount of management and Board time spent on compliance well beyond what’s necessary to ensure a solvent and properly functioning market. Ultimately, this smothering regulatory blanket will drive business out of Lloyd’s and further the trend of placement in local markets.”

So what does all of this tell us about the next few years? Pricing and relaxed terms and conditions will inevitably have an impact, reserve releases will dry up particularly from reinsurance and property, investment returns may improve and claim inflation may increase but neither materially so, firms will focus on expense reduction whilst dealing with more intrusive regulation, and the recent run of low catastrophic losses will not last. ROEs of low double digits or high single digits does not, in my view, compensate for these risks. Longer term the market faces structural changes, in the interim it faces a struggle to deliver a sensible risk adjusted return.

Valuations in the specialty insurance and reinsurance sector have been given a bump up with all of the M&A activity and the on-going speculation about who will be next. The Artemis website reported this week that Deutsche Bank believe the market is not differentiating enough between firms and that even with a lower cost of capital some are over-valued, particularly when lower market prices and the relaxation in terms and conditions are taken into account. Although subject to hyperbole, industry veteran John Charman now running Endurance, stated in a recent interview that market conditions in reinsurance are the most “brutal” he has seen in his 44 year career.

One interesting development is the re-emergence of Richard Brindle with a new hybrid hedge fund type $2 billion firm, as per this Bloomberg article. Given the money Brindle made out of Lancashire, I am surprised that he is coming back with a business plan that looks more like a jump onto the convergence hedge fund reinsurer band wagon than anything more substantive given current market conditions. Maybe he has nothing to lose and is bored! It will be interesting to see how that one develops.

There have been noises coming out of the market that insurance linked securities (ILS) pricing has reached a floor. Given that the Florida wind exposure is ground zero for the ILS market, I had a look through some of the deals on the Artemis website, to see what pricing was like. The graph below does only have a small number of data points covering different deal structures so any conclusions have to be tempered. Nonetheless, it does suggest that rate reductions are at least slowing in 2015.

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Any review of ILS pricing, particularly for US wind perils, should be seen in the context of a run of low storm recent activity in the US for category 3 or above. In their Q3-2014 call, Renaissance Re commented (as Eddie pointed out in the comments to this post) that the probability of a category 3 or above not making landfall in the past 9 years is statistically at a level below 1%. The graph below shows some wind and earthquake pricing by vintage (the quake deals tend to be the lower priced ones).

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This graph does suggest that a floor has been reached but doesn’t exactly inspire any massive confidence that pricing in recent deals is any more adequate than that achieved in 2014.

From looking through the statistics on the Artemis website, I thought that a comparison to corporate bond spreads would be interesting. In general (and again generalities temper the validity of conclusions), ILS public catastrophe bonds are rated around BB so I compared the historical spreads of BB corporate against the average ILS spreads, as per the graph below.

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The graph shows that the spreads are moving in the same direction in the current environment. Of course, it’s important to remember that the price of risk is cheap across many asset classes as a direct result of the current monetary policy across the developed world of stimulating economic activity through encouraging risk taking.

Comparing spreads in themselves has its limitation as the underlying exposure in the deals is also changing. Artemis uses a metric for ILS that divides the spread by the expected loss, referred to herein as the ILS multiple. The expected loss in ILS deals is based upon the catastrophe modeller’s catalogue of hurricane and earthquake events which are closely aligned to the historical data of known events. To get a similar statistic to the ILS multiple for corporate bonds, I divided the BB spreads by the 20 year average of historical default rates from 1995 to 2014 for BB corporate risks. The historical multiples are in the graph below.

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Accepting that any conclusions from the graph above needs to consider the assumptions made and their limitations, the trends in multiples suggests that investors risk appetite in the ILS space is now more aggressive than that in the corporate bond space. Now that’s a frightening thought.

Cheap risk premia never ends well and no fancy new hybrid business model can get around that reality.

Follow-up: Lane Financial LLC has a sector report out with some interesting statistics. One comment that catch my eye is that they estimate a well spread portfolio by a property catastrophic reinsurer who holds capital at a 1-in-100 and a 1-in-250 level would only achieve a ROE of 8% and 6.8% respectively at todays ILS prices compared to a ROE of 18% and 13.3% in 2012. They question “the sustainability of the independent catastrophe reinsurer” in this pricing environment and offer it as an explanation “why we have begun to see mergers and acquisitions, not between two pure catastrophe reinsurers but with cat writers partnering with multi-lines writers“.

With exposure adjusted rates in the specialty insurance and reinsurance sector continually under pressure and founder/former CEO, Richard Brindle, making an unseemly quick exit with a generous pay-out, Lancashire’s stock has been decidedly unloved with the price trading well below the key £7 threshold highlighted in my last post on the subject in February. Although we remain in the middle of the US hurricane season (and indeed the Napa earthquake is a reminder that its always earthquake season), I thought it was a good time to have a quick look over Lancashire’s figures again, particularly as the share price broke below the £6 threshold earlier this month, a level not seen since early 2011. The stock has clearly now lost its premium valuation compared to others in the London market as the graph below shows.

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Results for H1-2014, which include full numbers from the November 2013 acquisition of Cathedral, show a continuing trend on the impact of rate reductions on loss ratios, as per the graph below.

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The impact of the Cathedral deal on reserve levels are highlighted below. The graph illustrates the consistent relative level of IBNR to case reserves compared to the recent past which suggests a limited potential for any cushion for loss ratios from prior year reserve releases.

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The management at Lancashire have clearly stated their strategy of maintaining their discipline whilst taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities “that allow us to maintain our core insurance and reinsurance portfolios, whilst significantly reducing net exposures and enhancing risk adjusted returns”. In my last post, I looked at post Cathedral gross and net PMLs as a percentage of earned premiums against historical PMLs. More applicable figures as per July for each year, against calendar year gross and net earned premiums (with an estimate for 2014), are presented below. They clearly show that the net exposures have reduced from the 2012 peak. It is important to note however that the Gulf of Mexico net 1 in 100 figures are high at 35%, particularly compared to many of its peers.

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There is of course always the allure of the special dividend. Lancashire has indicated that in the absence of attractive business opportunities they will look at returning most, if not all, of their 2014 earnings to shareholders. Assuming the remainder of 2014 is relatively catastrophe free; Lancashire is on track to make $1-$1.10 of EPS for the full year. If they do return, say, $1 to shareholders that represents a return of just below 10% on today’s share price of £6.18. Not bad in today’s environment! There may be a short term trade there in October after the hurricane season to take advantage of a share pick-up in advance of any special dividend.

Others in the sector are also holding out the prospect of special dividends to reward patient shareholders. The fact that other firms, some with more diverse businesses and less risky risk profiles, offer potential upside through special dividends may also explain why Lancashire has lost its premium tangible book multiple, as per the first graph in this post.

Notwithstanding that previously Lancashire was a favorite of mine due to its nimble and focused approach, I cannot get past the fact that the sector as a whole is mired in an inadequate risk adjusted premia environment (the impact of which I highlighted in a previous post). In the absence of any sector wide catalyst to change the current market dynamic, my opinion is that it is expedient to pass on Lancashire here, even at this multi-year low.

The game of chicken that is unfolding across this sector is best viewed from the side-lines in my view.

After Hurricane Arthur briefly made landfall in North Carolina on Thursday night, a weakened storm is now heading north. I thought this would be good time to have a look at the probable maximum losses (PMLs) published as at the Q1 2014 results by a sample of specialist (re)insurers, first presented in a post in June 2013. That post went into some detail on the uncertainties surrounding the published PMLs and should be read as relevant background to the figures presented here.

Despite predictions of an above average 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, the number of named hurricanes was the lowest since 1982. Predictions for the 2014 season are for a below average number of hurricanes primarily due to cooler sea temperatures in the Atlantic due to the transition to El Niño (although that is now thought to be slower than previously anticipated). The graph below includes the 2014 predictions.

click to enlarge I like to look at PMLs as a percentage of net tangible assets (NTA) on a consistent basis across firms to assess exposures from a common equity viewpoint. Many firms include subordinated debt or other forms of hybrid debt in capital when showing their PMLS. For example, Lancashire has approximately $330 million of sub-debt which they include in their capital figures and I have show the difference with and without the sub-debt in the percentages for Lancashire in the graph below on US wind PMLs to illustrate the comparison.

Whether hybrid debt comes in before equity or alongside equity depends upon the exact terms and conditions. The detail of such instruments will determine whether such debt is classified as tier 1, 2 or 3 capital for regulatory purposes under Solvency II (although there are generous transitional timeframes of up to 10 years for existing instruments). The devil is often in the detail and that is another reason why I prefer to exclude them and use a consistent NTA basis.

As per the June 2013 post, firms often classify their US wind exposures by zone but I have taken the highest exposures for each (which may not necessarily be the same zone for each firm).

click to enlarge These exposures, although expressed as percentages of NTAs, should be considered net of potential profits made for 2014 to assess the real impact upon equity (provided, of course, that the expected profits don’t all come from property catastrophe lines!). If for example we assume a 10% return on NTA across each firm, then the figures above have to be adjusted.

Another issue, also discussed in the previous post, is the return period for similar events that each firms present. For example, the London market firms present Lloyds’ realistic disaster scenarios (RDS) as their PMLs. One such RDS is a repeat of the 1926 Miami hurricane which is predicted to cost $125 billion for the industry if it happened today. For the graph above, I have assumed a 1 in 200 return period for this scenario. The US & Bermudian firms do not present scenarios but points on their occurrence exceedance probability (OEP) curves.

As it is always earthquake season, I also include the PMLs for a California earthquake as per the graph below.

click to enlarge In terms of current market conditions, the mid-year broker reports are boringly predictable. John Cavanagh, the CEO of Willis Re, commented in their report that “the tentacles of the softening market are spreading far and wide, with no immediate signs of relief. We’ve seen muted demand throughout 2014 and market dynamics are unlikely to change for some time to come. The current market position is increasingly challenging for reinsurers.” Aon Benfield, in their report, stated that “the lowest reinsurance risk margins in a generation stimulate new growth opportunities for insurers and may allow governments to reduce their participation in catastrophe exposed regions as insurance availability and affordability improves”. When people start talking about low pricing leading to new opportunities to take risk, I can but smile. That’s what they said during the last soft market, and the one before that!

Some commentators are making much of the recent withdrawal of the latest Munich Re bond on pricing concerns as an indicator that property catastrophe prices have reached a floor and that the market is reasserting discipline. That may be so but reaching a floor below the technical loss cost level sounds hollow to me when talking about underwriting discipline.

To finish, I have reproducing the graph on Flagstone Re from the June 2013 post as it speaks a thousand words about the dangers of relying too much on the published PMLs. Published PMLs are, after all, only indicators of losses from single events and, by their nature, reflect current (group) thinking from widely used risk management tools.

click to enlarge Follow-on: It occurred to me after posting that I could compare the PMLs for the selected firms as at Q1 2014 against those from Q1 2013 and the graph below shows the comparison. It does indicate that many firms have taken advantage of cheap reinsurance/retrocession and reduced their net profiles, as highlighted in this post on arbitrage opportunities. Some firms have gone through mergers or business model changes. Endurance, for example, has been changed radically by John Charman (as well as being an aggressive buyer of coverage). Lancashire is one of the only firms whose risk profile has increased using the NTA metric as a result of the Cathedral acquisition and the increase in goodwill.

Disclaimer

This blog represents my personal views and is not reflective of the views or opinions held by any company or employer I work for currently or have worked for in the past. The views expressed herein are based solely upon publicly available data. No views expressed herein should be taken as an endorsement to take any particular course of action in the markets. The basis of this blog is that different views should be expressed and readers make up their own minds on the what they believe and act accordingly.